Hello everyone!! Emily here, I have been working on this chapter all week and I'm really glad I got it done!!
I am really sorry that I don't really have any descriptions of the characters, but i did get a description of Nick, Alyssa and Alex in this one, so i plan to describe the others in later chapters, and Alyssa gets a last name! –
Also- This chapter has much less to do with band then the first one, sorry!
Also!!- I'm really really sorry that this chapter is not actually about the infamous "Lunch" scene, but I felt like I couldn't just leave the weekend out, and it was a good chance to introduce Michelle.
I absolutely promise that the next chapter will be "LUNCH." ;)
Previously in "One Not-So-Normal Day":
Liz's phone rang and she said, "Oh sorry guys, our ride is hear, see ya Monday."
I received an "Aww," from both the brothers and a goodbye from Nick.
I was just about to turn around and walk into the open door of Liz's mom's minivan, but I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see the bright beautiful face of Austin looking at me. I almost fainted when I heard what he said next.
"Hey, see you in lunch."
Well, I think I can safely say that I have not been in my right mind since the night of the football game.
I have determined that it must have been either from the rather abrupt realization that Austin knows I exist, or (more likely) from the pretty-near-concussion I received immediately after this realization, when I attempted to look the tiniest bit calm as I climbed into the car to get in my seat, and I miraculously managed to bump my head into the top of Liz's car. (Wow that was a really long sentence.)
It was really embarrassing actually. Considering how everyone was there and all. And how Austin, to my best knowledge (which means what Liz told me afterwards) was watching me walk away.
On Saturday morning, as I was contemplating this, and what a ridiculously awesome thing it would be if I could really believe that it actually happened, I got a phone call from my other non-band friend Lauren, who was sadly not present when the aforementioned calamity involving my head occurred. I asked her if she would like to go to the mall and invite Liz and Gianna also.
Okay, okay, so I really invited Liz and Gianna so that I could have a really good excuse to talk about my Austin situation, and if they were there, they would back me up. Hopefully.
So, Lauren's mother drops us off at the movie theater entrance and we walk up the steps into the movie theater. Our aim was to walk through the theater and out the entrance into the mall near the food court.
Unfortunately, our progress was stalled by the sudden appearance of a certain someone.
That someone was walking the opposite way – out of the theater, so we could see him and he could see us.
Yet again I received a wave from none other than my (hopefully) future brother in law. He did look very nice today, he looks a lot like Austin, only his hair is much curlier and Austin is just more… crush-worthy. To me at least.
Truth be told- I did not really want to have this conversation again, especially since, if it involved Austin, (and it had to since he really did not have anything else to say to me), I could only imagine how red my cheeks would turn. Various shades of a deep tomato color rushed into my mind.
"Hey, Alyssa!" He called as he closed the short distance between himself and my posse, regrettably my making escape an impossibility, "What's up Liz? Gianna?"
"Oh, hey Nick, what are you doing here?" I answered back as I put on my best almost-authentic smile and tried to hide my probably now crimson/cherry/vermillion colored ears under my hair.
"Duh, I work here! Austin's coming to pick me up, so I was just going to wait outside, I'm a little late, but Austin is never on time," he laughed, and we all laughed together a little awkwardly.
I smiled for real at that. Aww, Austin is always late! So am I! We can hang out and go to parties and stuff and be late together!
"Oh, cool." Liz said, as Gianna and Lauren started to laugh harder at my already lost-in-dreamland-being-late-with-Austin expression, and we all laughed less awkwardly together.
Just then, Lauren looked over at me from the other side of Liz and gave me a funny look. She moved her head and raised her eyebrows for a second, like she was trying to tell me to look a certain direction.
"Yeah, I was just looking for Michelle; she needed a ride too," Nick smiled and started to look in the same direction Lauren had motioned to.
And that's when I realized what Lauren's little head nod was all about. Michelle Palmer was sauntering right over to our odd little gang. Michelle is this gorgeous and popular girl with perfectly straightened red hair, but the kind of red hair that could easily make any blonde jealous, not to mention me, my natural brunette hair and my fake red highlights, and don't forget about her perfect green eyes and long legs, it really isn't surprising that Austin would date a girl like her, not a short, small girl like me, with brown eyes, who tries to make her hair look perfect every morning and has only recently reached close-to-success. Anyway, I really would have killed to have hair naturally that prefect red.
I had never really disliked her personally or anything, but the fact that she had been going out with Austin, the love of my life, for like a month and a half seems to me a good enough reason to have a slightly negative attitude toward the woman.
"Nick, how the hell could you have gotten from all the way over there-" she stood on tippy-toe and reached her arms up to point to somewhere over the popcorn stand and held out the poise as long as it took her to elongate the word. She made "there," into "thair-eeeeh." She continued when the word was done, "-To waaaay over here?" She moved her already outstretched arms to follow the distance and did the same thing she did to the word "there," to the word "way."
I admit it, I already didn't like her. She looked like she was showing off herself or something with all those raised arm poises! Like she was showing off her arms! Who shows off their arms?! In the middle of a movie theater lobby!
I mean she did have good arms, I guess, but I was more concerned with how she was wearing flip flops! She obviously didn't realize it was cold out. Ugh! And she has nice manicured feet! Obviously her feet have never been forced to wear those goofy orthopedic-like marching band shoes!
"Austin just texted me that he is actually waiting on time for us today," she half laughed at/with Nick, and smirked at me.
"That's a first," Nick laughed and started walking away with her before he turned to say goodbye.
We all said our goodbyes and made our way into the mall.
"He still texts his Ex!! What is wrong with him?! Someone else's number should replace that girl's. Someone's as in mine." I sighed in exaggerated irritation and we all burst into laughter a second later.
We walked around the mall for a while after that, about four hours.
It was mostly uneventful except for the occasional bump-into-the-fancy-mannequin, and of course we all know how much fun it is when you try to order chicken and noodles at the hibachi place and wind up with rice and pork, and how they give you a flimsy little Styrofoam cup filled with your coke and as soon as you stick your straw through it, it goes right through the cup and soda squirts out everywhere on everybody. Even strangers. (Which can make cleaning up rather problematic.)
"And to think! It was the only thing you managed to order correctly in the first place!" Lauren humorously criticized me later on the phone the next day, Sunday.
"Well, at least I cleaned it up, right? And what was with those people who sat next to us!? They were all like, giving me the cold stare when I just apologizing and wiping their stupid table off!?" I said.
Lauren and I burst into laughter before she even said it because I knew what she was going to say.
"That's because they didn't speak English!!"
... Well, the rest of Sunday was really just a blah/normal day.
Unfortunately I had to get up early (nothing compared to my 5:00ish on weekdays, but early for the weekend) for church, then head off to Wegmans. Ugh, Wegmans, also known as the store where-you-can't-walk-in-without-seeing-one-of-those-kids-from-school-who-you-kinda-know-but-you're-not-sure-you-know-them-well-enough-to-say-"hi"-which-creates-awkward-moments-which-you-hate. (Well that's a very long pseudonym…)
But I think its worth it really for all those delectable chocolate muffins. Who cares when you have to go through the checkout line of that guy who liked your best friend last year before she told him she didn't want to have anything to do with him? Those muffins are THE best…
All in all, the weekend was mostly all fun either way. (Excepting of course, the Michelle incident at the movies).
But things changed when I got off the bus and headed into school on Monday morning.
I had put on my favorite purple pants, (yes purple pants! How cool is that!? They're my favorite) because I was very nervous about the fact that today would be the first time ever that I would walk into lunch knowing that the boy I was scanning the room for actually knew I existed.
Anyway, my locker is in band hall of course, and is always either blocked by other clarinet players sitting doing homework, or drummers and trumpeters gathering in a big circle to talk… well I guess to talk… honestly I don't really know what they do, they just kind of stand there…
But Anyway, Alex, my drummer friend, who is a girl-drummer and therefore "stands there" with other people most of the mornings, sometimes including me, walked over presumably to say hello.
Alex is a very interesting person. She's like the friend you wouldn't have had if you weren't forced to ride the bus everyday. Which is how we became friends, actually, and had a lot of fun making up songs about our evil bus driver to the tune of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." She's all black-clothes and Buckcherry and Nirvana, but miraculously this girl is a freaking genus! She's in all honors classes and she's crazy smart and stuff.
"Alex, has anyone ever told you that you're a walking contradiction?" I joked with her after the hellos were exchanged.
"I get it all the time!" She laughed, "But also, I think I should tell you something, but its not big or anything, just that Michelle Palmer asked me about you this morning, she came down band hall with Nick when he was putting his guitar into the band room for rock-band, it was really creepy actually. (Laughter) She was like 'You know that girl, Alyssa Sorvino?" and when I said yeah she was like 'Is she like retarded or something?" and I was like "No, she's my friend."
"Well, thank you, Alex. Sheesh, that girl is really mean and annoying, we saw her at the mall actually on Saturday and she was all ... 'eeewwwwwww'." And I wiggled my fingers to better describe her eww-ness.
Alex laughed as the bell rang. "May the force be with you!" She said her version of "See you later," to me as I walked down the hall to my English class.
Yup, Mondays are always a big change from the weekend, and boy was this going to be a long day.
Hi everyone! I really hope you liked it!!
Chapter 3 will be up soon!! And be about lunch!!
IMPORTANT- I am thinking about changing the title of this story to something along the lines of "It's just us when the crowd goes home," or "When the game is over, it's just us," or "I'll see you after the game." So PLEASE tell me what you think of those!!
Review please! I always review back!!
Then go tell all your friends! ;)